Saturday, January 8, 2011

A Journalist's New Years Resolution

I just finished reading the Columbia Journalism Review's story "The Hamster Wheel" that any journalist or someone who is interested in how their news is selected should read. The 24/7 news cycle and technology growth is truly shaping the news industry, but the media often times is just not accepting the evolution. Any reporter and journalism student know that fact.

This led me to hop onto their website, after carefully holding the print edition, where I stumbled across their blurb Media New Year's Resolutions. I think the first paragraph just rings so true.

No point giving up dark chocolate, red wine, or blacker-than-black coffee. We’re journalists. We’d last a week. Max.
If I've learned one thing about being a reporter, it is your diet tends to suffer. There is a mix of rapid fast food stops and coffee binges, while puffing done another cigarette to make it through the day.  I think if I had a resolution it would be to not eat so, well, unhealthy.  Oh, and maybe get some more sleep, but that might be asking for too much.

I'm sure some of my problems are my own fault.  Procrastination has been an ongoing problem for me. I'll never forget taking one of those tests online and coming up with the status "severe procrastinator," but the results are always the same for me.  I'm not sure why I am this way, but I think I have been making some stride in that category.

Making a New Year's resolution though I now view as a curse. I never am able to keep any resolution I make, so in many ways I think it is damning to make it in the first place. In some superstitious way, I don't want to damn myself in an area I want to make an improvement. For instance, last year my resolution was to take better care of my teeth, which my dentist was pleased to hear. Well, lets just say that didn't turn out quite how I planned.

Well, I already had some coffee, chocolate and a cigarette today, so I think I am off to a pretty nice start.

No comments:

Post a Comment